Shalom Mendoza, a 21-year-old serving a five-year sentence for using a deadly weapon during a carjacking and resisting police, had disappeared from the prison on Dec. 26. Officials said he had been assigned to work outside the secured perimeter of the prison “and he took advantage of an opportunity to leave.”

He is suspected of carjacking someone in a San Rafael-area Home Depot parking lot, then ditching the car off Interstate 101 near Paso Robles.

A person spotted Mendoza at a Taco Bell in Paso Robles on Saturday afternoon, and Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation agents rushed to the scene to arrest him.